The field of communication systems network management is widely practiced. In today's global mobile world, network access is practically a requirement for daily life. As the number of people seeking access to networks continues to increase, the demand for reliable mechanisms for network owners to efficiently and effectively manage their resources increases as well.
There is a need for a network operator to limit total bandwidth on a per-subscriber basis when the subscriber has multiple physical devices. For example, consider a network communication system operated in a hotel. The modern business traveler staying in the hotel may use a laptop, a tablet computer, and a smartphone. Each of these devices is configurably operable to access a network. This business traveler can access the hotel network with each device but may be required to purchase access for each individual device. Alternatively, the network operator can allow all the devices onto the network using a single subscription, but the operator has no control over the aggregate bandwidth consumed by the single subscriber. In other words, the present art does not provide a way for the hotel network communication system operator to limit the bandwidth to the group of devices for a particular subscriber, which, in this example, is the business traveler.